


only young and naive still

by alanabloom



Series: Young Blood 'verse [6]
Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Middle School, Deleted Scenes, Drabble, F/F, Tumblr Prompts, mini-fics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 13:58:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4103446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alanabloom/pseuds/alanabloom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of the OITNB week, mini-fic-athon.  All the prompts I got for deleted scenes/missing moments from Young Blood verse.</p><p>(So far:  Young Blood + Summer; Diane finds Alex after her OD in Landslide)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Anonymous asked Young Blood Alex and Piper + Summer.
> 
> This is the summer after junior year of high school. Just a drabble.

"Remember that game we used to play, when we'd sing underwater and try to guess the song?"  Piper's voice floats lazily up to her, and Alex murmurs an assent.  There's no follow-up, no real reason for Piper to mention it, but Alex can hear Piper start singing quietly to herself - Sweet Child Of Mine, it sounds like - as if she's reliving the games in her own head.

Alex understands the impulse.  Summer nights like this feel cloaked in nostalgia, like memories become more easily reached.  Probably sensory overload: the heavy, still hot dark.  The smell of chlorine.  Cicadas humming.  Fireflies dotting the night, and the occasional unwelcome sting of a mosquito. 

Lifting a tightly rolled joint to her lips, Alex sucks in a taste that doesn't remind her of childhood.  A few drops of water hit her, courtesy of Piper, and she smirks while sending smoke jetting toward the sky.  Piper doesn't like her smoking here, even just cigarettes, but it's nearly three a.m. and the Chapman house is still and silent behind them.  

Alex is stretched out on the diving board in her cut offs and a bikini top, while Piper floats around somewhere underneath on a neon pink inflatable tube.  Every once in awhile she drifts close to the diving board, and Alex reaches down to to snatch her wrist or ankle or whatever's accessible, holding her hostage for a teasing moment before sending her floating off again.  

Now, Piper splashes again, more insistently.  "Get in already."

Alex rolls onto her stomach, leaning over the boards edge and offering the joint with a grin.  "Help me finish this faster."  

Piper swats at her wrist, and Alex pulls her arm back before Piper knocks it into the water and wastes perfectly okay-ish weed.  

When they were younger, they used to spend practically the whole summer at Piper's pool, so much so that they were constantly cycling through the stages of sunburn.  But around the end of middle school, they started spending fewer hours swimming, the fun and novelty of it no longer able to sustain whole days or even afternoons.  

But they've always loved night swims.  There's something secret and hidden about the Chapman's backyard at this hour; it slopes down, away from the house, trees looming overhead, slicing the sky into tiny, star freckled patches.  They'd started sneaking outside in seventh grade, whenever Alex slept over; it had taken her nearly a year to convince Piper.  

Mostly what Alex remembers is trying desperately unthink thoughts about Piper, skinny and self-conscious in brand new string bikinis, and far too often talking about boys.  

Now, Alex watches Piper slip out of the tube and duck underwater, gone for a moment before she shoots back up, slicking back wet blonde hair and looking up at Alex.  The nostalgia must have a hold on her again, because she prompts, "Remember Fox and the Hounds?" 

"You mean Swimming with Sharks," Alex counters with a smile.  Another game they invented, one that would have been more effective if they'd had more players than Cal and, occasionally, Danny to join in.  It was essentially Marco Polo in reverse:  only one player kept their eyes open, while everyone else in the pool had to swim blindly to try to tag the singular hider.  There was always a lot of communication between the seekers, attempts at strategy, but the person hiding didn't have to say anything.  

Now that Alex thinks about it, a lot of their games involved forced blindness.  There was another one on the trampoline that Danny had taught them, where one player lay in the center with their eyes closed until the others started the game - "Wake from the dead!" - and they could then, still on their knees, eyes shut, leap toward the edge of the trampoline's rubber mat, trying to trip another player.  That had been a staple until Cal toppled off and broke his wrist - hence why the trampoline is now enclosed in dark black tarp.  

Piper splashes Alex again, refocusing her attention.  "Whatever we called it.  You know why I thought of that game?"

"Why?"  

"Cause _you_ were such an asshole cheater."  She arches an accusatory eyebrow, trying to stop herself from smiling as she waves a hand to indicate Alex's current position.  

"Technically the edge of the diving board is _in_ the radius of the pool," Alex practically recites the old justification with a smug smirk.

"You're the worst."

"You used to get _so_ pissy..."

"It's cheating!"  

"So fucking competitive."  

"Get _in_ already."  

" _Fine_ ," Alex parrots her tone, sucking in a last hit before standing up on the slick board, holding the joint between her teeth as she maneuvers her shorts off, high kicking them without much care somewhere into the yard.  She delicately puts the tiny centimeter that's left of the joint on the edge of the board before aiming at a spot in the water close to Piper and jumping.  

When Alex kicks her way to the surface, Piper's already gone, dog paddling over to the diving board to retrieve the weed, throwing Alex a look over her shoulder.  "You'll leave it sitting there, and my parents will find it."

"Uh-huh.  I see how it is.  Trying to sneak a hit while I'm underwater...deprive me of the privilege of knowing I've finally corrupted you."  

Piper goes to the edge of the pool and leans over, tucking the tiny, sopping wet contraband under her towel, giving Alex the welcome opportunity to swim up behind her and pin her against the wall.  The weed's taken effect, and everything feels slow and lazy, the water sloshing and bathtub warm, and Piper tastes like every single summer of their lives.  

 

* * *

 

 

They swim for awhile, because Alex kind of loves swimming stoned at night, with the pool lights off an Piper grappling for her hands underwater, but they end up crossing the yard to the trampoline, still dripping wet, warm enough that they don't even bother toweling off.

Dirt and blades of grass cling to their wet feet and get tracked onto the trampoline.  They shut the slip in the tarp, and Alex hopes it's been long enough now - four years - to be grateful for Cal's broken wrist, because the enclosure is definitely the only reason Piper feels safely hidden enough in her own backyard to end up between Alex's legs, their wet bathing suits slung in wrinkled heaps at the blue edges of the trampoline.  

Alex is arching her hips into Piper's mouth, Piper hands reaching up and under her wet bikini top, pushing it so its caught uselessly under chin.  It gives Piper no real balance, and they're both bouncing the slightest bit.  Alex is so close, her head thrown back and aimed at the sky, and she can no longer keep track of the stars, when suddenly Piper's tongue slips, like she's losing her place, and Alex feels the slightest edge of teeth and then lips before the contact slips completely.  She lets out a whine, trying to adjust her hips back against Piper's mouth, when she realizes that Piper is _giggling_.  

She lifts her head to look at Alex, eyes and lips shining.  Alex lets out a throaty, needy moan.  Her whole body feels strained.  " _Pipes_."

"Sorry, sorry, it's...the way you're lying..."  The laughing takes over for a second before she can continue, lowering her voice for dramatic emphasis.  " _Wake from the dead_."  

Alex bucks her hips the slightest bit, commanding.  "We can reminisce later, Pipes.  Fucking finish what you started."

 


	2. Lifting Cars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Anonymous said: I like pain. YB verse. Landslide. Diane finds Alex when she ODs.
> 
> Tw: drugs

In reality, moments of superhuman strength don't come from men changing clothes in phone booths or scaling tall buildings.  They aren't performed by multi-millionaires concealing their identity and packing wild technology.  

Women who lift cars to save their children; that's the go-to example, the popular tale that people have no trouble believing.  

In reality, superhuman strength belongs to mothers.  

Diane Vause doesn't lift a car.  She makes a phone call.  

It feels just as superhuman.

  

* * *

 

Diane gets home from work after midnight, glad to see Alex's car in the driveway; the two of them haven't crossed paths in the apartment for the last few days.  

There's a single lamp on in the apartment living room, and Alex's bedroom door is closed.  "Al?" Diane calls out loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough to wake Alex up if she's asleep.   

There's no answer.  Diane slips out of her sneakers and gets a beer out of the refrigerator.  She sits on the counter, drinking with one hand and massaging the arch of her foot with the other.  She grabs a banana off the top of the fridge and eats around the bruises.

She wastes seven and a half minutes in the dim dark of the kitchen before she goes down the hall for the bathroom, stopping habitually to look in on Alex.

Her bedroom is empty.  Diane frowns, surprised. 

She flips on the light, like she needs to make sure.  Alex isn't there.

Backing out of the room, Diane glances down the carpeted hallway and notices light coming from under the bathroom door.

"Alex?"  She's loud, now, making sure her daughter will hear. 

Alex probably left the light on, she's probably gone somewhere in someone else's car, all of that makes so much more sense than any worst case scenario, but Diane's head is still full of airy panic as she hurries to the door and grabs for the knob.

It's unlocked, and Diane shoves it open and ends up thumping her knee against the door when it doesn't open all the way, colliding with something solid on the other side.

Diane's eyes shoot down, peering into six inch gap of the doorway, and she sees Alex's dirty black Converse, the one with the laces fraying at the edges and smudged sharpie scrawled song lyrics fading around the white edges.  

For a hard few heartbeats of a moment, Diane stares at the shoe like she can't make sense of what she's seeing.  

Then she realizes it's not _just_  a shoe, and all of a sudden Diane's life starts caving in on itself.

" _ALEX_."  Her daughter's name is the word she knows best of all, but she has never said it like this.  Like it might rip her at the seams.  "AlexAlexAlex..."  She keeps saying it as she pushes on the door, colliding with something, with what she now knows is probably _leg_ and  _hip_ and  _shoulder_ , and she doesn't pause long enough to hear the answer not come.  

Diane angles herself through the crack and bursts into the bright white of the bathroom.  Alex is sitting on the floor, but it's not really sitting because her eyes are closed and she's slid too close to the floor.

 

* * *

 

Mothers with superhuman strength lift cars off their children. 

This is what Diane does: 

  * She checks Alex's neck for a pulse.



"C'mon, baby, wake up for me..."

  * Watches her chest, looking for a rise and fall.  She can't be sure.



 "Please please please  _please Alex_." 

  * Leans close to her face, listening for escaping air, trying to feel her breath against her cheek.  She does barely.



"You're okay, you're okay, I'm right here, babe, you're okay."  

  * Leaves the room, lets Alex out of her sight long enough to find a phone.



"I need an ambulance, 453 Eleanor Ave, apartment 203.  My daughter's unconscious, she's barely breathing, _please_."

 

* * *

 

An ambulance is on its way.  Diane had called for help.  She had done what she was she supposed to.

She goes back to the bathroom with the cordless phone in her hand. Even though Diane is holding her daughter against her, it feels like she's still trying to get closer, like her heart is clawing through her chest to get to Alex, shredding muscle and bones.  She strokes Alex's hair with one hand and moves the other between her pulse and her mouth, checking for heartbeats and breathing.  She holds herself together so she can answer the paramedics' questions, so she can listen to what they say.

She doesn't  _act_ like a woman who is collapsing.  A woman knee deep in the end of the world.  

 _That_ is her superhuman strength.

 

* * *

 

She doesn't see the needle on the floor until they pull Alex away from her.

"Is she a regular user?"  

"How long's she been IV-ing?"

"Does she have a history with heroin?"  

 _Heroin_.

Diane falls back in time, just for a second, checking out of the horror show that is the present.  She remembers Lee shooting up so many times.  She'd done it with him a few times, and it makes her veins run cold with guilt.  Like Alex was born into this poison.  

She thinks of her father, drifting off the road in his car with God knows what corrupting his blood - Diane had never let her mother get close enough to tell her the truth - and she thinks of giving her daughter his name.  

 

* * *

 

Her strength stays intact in the ambulance ride, she is holding onto Alex's limp fingers and straining to listen to what the paramedics are saying.  She does not feel smart enough to understand them, to even know what questions to ask, if there's something more she should be saying than "Is she okay is she okay _is she okay_?" _  
_

Mothers lifts cars but all Diane can do now is sit and watch and _not feel this_ for just a little while longer.

 

* * *

 

They wheel Alex away from her in the ER, dismissively tell her she has to go a waiting room, no one is giving her answers but Diane finally grabs the sleeve of one of the doctors swarming Alex and demands an answer, "Is she going to be alright?"  

The doctor's eyes meet hers, and for a second Diane sees what he's thinking:  that she is trash in a waitress uniform and she let her daughter shoot hard drugs right under her roof.  She failed, she has always been failing, but there's no coming back from this one.  "Please..."  she whispers thickly.  "Please tell me she's not going to die."

The doctor's eyes soften.  "We're going to do everything we can."  

Then he's gone, without giving her a  _yes_ , without saying that Alex is going to live. 

A nurse comes over and gently shows her to a line of chairs outside the emergency room, promising to update her as soon as they know something.  Diane turns to her, very deliberate.  She wants to tell them things about Alex, make them see more than just another drug using teen delinquent.  She wants to tell them that her daughter is smart and strong and probably heartbroken, but Alex's name breaks apart in her throat and suddenly Diane can't stop shaking.  She is human once again, she is feeling _everything_ , every piled up second of the last hour walloping her all at once.  

It's like a hook snags in her gut and drags a long animal howl straight out of the deepest part of her.  The sound slices the air, shatters what's left of her strength, and eventually it falls to pieces, too, collapsing into a fit of desperate weeping as Diane lowers herself to the ground out of necessity.    

Mothers lift cars.  

But if it isn't enough, if everything isn't okay after, are mothers allowed to disintegrate?   

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Thirstythirstyrambles on Tumblr asked for Alex first realizing she's in love with Piper. (she also asked for Alex's first kiss, which will be posted later today as a follow up to this one) 
> 
> Now, I've never really thought there's a singular moment...it's more like, the way Alex loves Piper kind of grew up with her, and it's never really a lightning bolt moment. But this is a good example of a time she realized how in deep she is, maybe?

Alex steals cigarettes from the box her mom keeps on top of the fridge, shoved to the very back, dusty part.  She's sick of being in the apartment anyway, so she lights one and sticks another behind her ear, then goes outside to brood.

The problem is their middle school.   It has too many fucking dances, even if there's not a real occasion.  Tonight's the Fall Fling, whatever the hell that is, and Alex's mom is working late, and Piper won't be home to call her for  _hours_.

She almost always calls after the dances, and luckily she never talks too much about whatever boy it was that made her want to go to those dumb things.  Instead they just make fun of their classmates as Piper fills Alex in on the drama.  Piper says there's always always _always_ at least one girl who ends up crying in the bathroom, surrounded by her comforting friends, and Alex likes to try and guess which one.

She's waited, bored at home on Friday nights, for a lot of middle school dances.  It's not like this is new - Piper went to most of the ones in sixth grade, and tonight's is already the second of seventh ( _really_ , the Halloween dance was less than a month ago).  

But tonight feels more annoying than usual, maybe because Andrew Welling has outlasted most of the other boyfriends.  Piper's usually on a monthly rotation of so-called middle school _relationships_ , but she and Andrew have been going out practically since the start of the school year.  And Piper had kept Alex on the phone for over an hour today after school while she tried to decide on a dress.

Like Andrew is even going to notice.

Alex is leaning on the rail on the balcony hallway of the apartment building, picking at its chipped white paint even though its completely destroying her black nail polish, and she's worked herself into a full blown sulk when a voice calls out from behind her, "Yo, Al, what's up?" 

She turns around to see Chris locking his apartment door and grinning at her, two of his buddies hovering behind him.  Chris is a senior in high school, and he and his older brother have lived two doors down from Alex and her mom the whole time they've lived in the building.  They'd helped them carry boxes when they'd moved in four years ago, when he was thirteen and Alex was nine, but in the last year her so he seems to have lost track of their age difference.  They're forever throwing parties in their place, almost every weekend it seems like, and every time he sees Alex he invites her to one.  

"Oh, hey."  

He nods at her cigarette, lowering his voice, teasingly authoritative.  "You know those things'll kill you."  

She rolls her eyes at him.  "Just trying to get rid of the weed smell permanently outside your door."  

Chris laughs and Alex smirks at him.  She likes him okay; he talks to her like she's his age, but he doesn't look at her in that usual teenage boy way that creeps her out.  Behind him, though, his friends  _are_ giving her that look.  She ignores them.

"You going to the game?" 

"Huh?"  A second after she says it, Alex figures out what he's talking about.  Their town's shitty high school football team must be playing at home tonight.  The whole town's social life doesn't revolve around the middle school dance, even though it kind of feels like it.  "Oh, that.  Fuck no."

"Aw, c'mon.  Better than sitting around here all night."

"Yeah, we'll show you a good time," one of his friends say in what he clearly thinks is an enticing voice.  Alex doesn't even glance at him.

Chris waves the keys to his brother's car.  "We're heading over now, if you want to ride with." 

Alex opens her mouth to refuse, but then hesitates.  The middle school is on the same street as the high school, barely half a mile away.  She could show up for the last part of the dance, surprise Piper and make fun of her a little, then maybe go back to her house for the night.  

"Sure, okay,"  She takes a last drag of the cigarette and stomps it out on the ground.  "I'll take a ride, if it's cool."

"Of course."  

 

* * *

 

 

She sits in the backseat with one of the guys.  He tries to talk when she's first buckling her seatbelt.  "Hey, you weren't in Hendricks' geo class last year, were you?" 

That must be a teacher at the high school.  Alex waits for a second to see if Chris is going to interject, say she's not in high school yet, but he doesn't, so she just says, "Nope," in a clipped, disinterested voice before turning deliberately to stare out the window.  

She tunes them out on the short ride to the high school, and once they're at the football stadium, Chris falls into step with her.  "We don't really sit in the bleachers - no point in watching this shit show - but a bunch of kids hang out behind the concession stand."  He lowers his voice and pats his jacket, "If you wanna smoke with us." 

"I'm gonna come find my friends.  Thanks for the ride though."  

"Sure. You need a ride back?"

"I'll find if I do, but don't worry about it."

She waits until he and his friends (one of whom who shoots her a disappointed look until Chris swats his shoulder) disappear into the crowd before turning and walking away from high school campus.

 

* * *

 

The dance is at least two hours in, but there's still a table of teachers at the front door with a lockbox and a poster board hanging off the front that says $5.

"It costs  _money_?"  Alex blurts out as soon as she steps up.   _  
_

The teachers, neither of whom she's ever had in class, exchange glances.  "Yes," says one of them.  "Unless you have a Gold card."  

A Gold card means a 3.0 or higher GPA and no major discipline problems.  Alex does have one, thank God, because even if she _had_ five bucks she wouldn't spend it to listen to shit music in the same room where she has PE.  "I have a Gold card."

"Great."

The teacher waits.  Alex waits.

"Can I.. _have_ it?"

"I don't have it _with_ me," Alex explains, making a face.  Jesus.  She hasn't seen that thing since they handed it out at the beginning of the year.  "You don't have a list or something?"  

" _No_ ," the teacher sounds impatient now, and she's giving Alex this annoying  _look_ , like she's totally judging her ripped jeans and T-shirt with the neck cut out and late arrival, how obvious it is that this dance wasn't a priority.  "We've said in announcements  _all_ week for card holders to bring them - "

"I can vouch for her, Sue."  They both look up to see Ms. Sommerville, Alex's English teacher, and one of the few who like her, probably because she actually does all the reading, walking up behind the table.  "She's gold."

"Really?"  The first teacher sounds skeptical.  Alex scowls at her but smooths it out before she sees.

"Really."  Sommerville winks at her the slightest bit.  "Go on in, Alex."  

"Thanks."  She can't help throwing a slightly smug look at the other adults as she heads further into the gym.

It's as awful as she always expected.  Some Boyz II Men song is playing, and the gym just looks like the gym with red and blue lights rotating all over it.  The whole dance floor area is made up of small circles of groups, and most of them don't seem to be dancing.  It's either all girls or all guys, huddle together, or a circle of couples holding hands.  

Incredibly lame, basically.

Alex scans the crowd for Piper, looking for the dress she was planning to wear, the black ones with the cherries printed all over it.  She spots a group of girls who are on the tennis team with Piper, dancing on the basketball foul line, but she isn't with them. 

The song changes to that Whitney Houston song, and the circles start to move out of the way in favor of couples.  Alex suffers even further off the sidelines, suddenly feeling weird about being seen here, when she finally sees Piper.  

She's not wearing the cherries dress, she's wearing the one with daisies.  Alex rolls her eyes and starts instinctively toward her, fully prepared to give her shit for demanding Alex's opinion and then not even sticking with the decision, when suddenly Andrew Welling is beside Piper, holding her hand and leading her to the dance floor, and Alex pulls up short.

He puts his arms around her waist and Piper puts hers around his neck, facing the side of the gym where Alex is standing.  Alex quickly sidles behind a cluster of singles, no longer wanting Piper to notice her there; after watching for a few moments, though, she figures out that there's little chance of that.  Piper is looking at Andrew like she can't look past him, and they seem more comfortable with this then most of the other couples.

This was a bad idea, Alex should leave, but she can't stop watching Piper dancing and smiling to fucking  _I Will Always Love You._

Then Andrew leans down and kisses her.

Alex's takes a sharp intake of breath that knifes its way into her lungs, and the bottom drops out of her stomach.  

They're still kissing, probably with tongue, Jesus Christ they're practically  _making out_ in the middle of the dance floor.  Alex stares against her will, like driving past a car crash, until the image goes blurry and oh  _shit_ this can't be happening.  She exhales, hard, and it comes out crooked.

She has to get out of here.  

No way is she walking past that teachers table again, so she makes a break for the side door, the one that leads to the school hallway and the locker rooms.  She shoves her glasses on top of her head so she can lower her face, hair falling on either side like a shield, until she makes it to the empty corridor, and even then she doesn't stop moving, just heads to the closest exit and into the bus parking lot.

She's hidden between two school buses and crying into her sleeves, full on  _bawling_ like a fucking child, and it's entirely pathetic.  She's not better than those idiot girls she and Piper make fun of, the ones who sob in school bathrooms over some petty middle school drama. 

Piper would be  _so_ freaked out if she knew about this.

That thought overwhelms her, and it's enough for Alex to forcibly pull herself together.

She saw Piper kissing a boy and she fucking  _cried_ about it.  Of course that would freak her out.  Like, never-want-to-sleep-over-again levels of freaked out.  

Alex wipes her face on the hem of her shirt and puts her glasses back on.  She leans against the bus, feeling small and stupid.  

She  _knows_ Piper kisses boys.  She's had about ten different boyfriends since they started middle school last year, and even though she's never mentioned it, not since Cody Lionel that first time, Alex isn't an idiot.  She knows what they do at these dances.  

She's just never had to watch it happen.

 

* * *

 

 

There's no way she's going back in there, and spending hours at the football game isn't much more appealing.  She's only a few miles from Friendly's, so Alex squares her shoulders and zips up her jacket and starts walking on the side of the road, trying not to look like a thirteen year old girl out by herself at night.  

The restaurant is almost empty of customers, and a bunch of waitresses are crowded around the hostess stand, just hanging out and awaiting the post-game rush, Alex's mom included. 

Diane's face breaks into a smile when she sees Alex.  "Well, hey, babe!"  Alex is barely three feet in the door when the smile fades into concern.  "You okay?"

Alex unconsciously averts her eyes, afraid her mom's going to see right through her.  "Fine, I was just bored."

"How'd you get here?  Tell me you didn't ride your bike all this way in the dark."

"No, Chris dropped me off.  He was on his way to the game." 

Her mom's eyebrows shoot up.  " _Chris_ , huh?"

Beth and Connie, her mom's friends and fellow waitresses, exchange exaggerated amused glances.  Beth winks at Alex.  "Ooh, do tell, kiddo.  Who's  _Chris_?"  

"Neighbor boy," Diane answers for her.  Then, pointedly, " _Seventeen year old_ neighbor boy, for the record."  

The others make over the top, scandalized sounds, obviously teasing her, but Alex's blood is simmering hot with anger.  She'd been kind of afraid she might see her mom and immediately want to cry again, but instead she's pissed off.   

"He just gave me a ride," she grits out.

"Is he cute?" Beth pushes.

Diane swats her, faux-groaning.  "Don't encourage that." 

" _God_ , stop" Alex snaps.  "I don't  _like_ him.  He literally just gave a fucking ride." 

The teasing leaves her mom's face immediately, but the other two still look way too damn amused.  Diane turns to look at them, mouthing something Alex can't see, and they nod sympathetically.  Connie winks before walking off, and Beth starts to follow her, first asking Alex, "You want any food, honey?"

She starts to refuse, but she hasn't really eaten since right after school.  "Cheese fries?"  

"Good choice."  Then Beth heads to the kitchen, too, leaving Alex and Diane alone.

"Hey..."  Diane moves closer, tucking a strand of Alex's hair behind her ear.  "What's going on, babe?  Really?"

Damn it.  Her voice is way too tender.  She definitely can tell Alex has been crying, and now her throat's tightening like she's going to do it again.  

" _Nothing."_ It's an almost panicked insistence.  "I was just bored, and Chris said he was driving...he and his friends invited me to the game, but I just asked if he could drop me here on the way."  Diane clearly doesn't buy that, and she still looks worried, so Alex adds stupidly, "And I was hungry."  

Thankfully, her mom isn't one to push her.  "Well, okay, babe, Beth'll grab your order.  I can sit with you for an hour or so, before the game ends and people start showing up...you know I don't get off until close to midnight."

"I don't mind."  

Her mom puts an arm around her and they walk to a booth.  "Didn't bring a book or anything?"  

"No."

They sit, and Beth brings Alex's cheese fries, and Diane doesn't say anything else about Chris or why Alex showed up here out of nowhere.  Her mom's pretty good at realizing when Alex just needs to quiet her brain by talking about nothing.

When customers start showing up, she has to go back to work, but she brings Alex a strawberry milkshake and hands it over with a gentle smile.  It makes Alex feel about five years old, all of a sudden; she sits in the booth for the rest of the night, watching her mom and her mom's friends zip around the dining area, just like she used to do when she was still too little to be left alone in the apartment by herself.  

That little kid feeling stays with her even when Friendly's finally closes and her mom takes her home.  In the car with her mom driving, The Rolling Stones playing softly on the radio, Alex suddenly really, really wants her mom to hug her.  She wants to cry and tell her everything that happened tonight, to confess that this is maybe more of a problem then Alex wants it to be, that if she's sobbing in parking lots and running out of school dances, doesn't that mean she has more than just a tiny, manageable crush on her best friend?

The truth is right on the tip of her tongue, quivering with the excitement of  _finally_ being said out loud, when suddenly Diane shoots her a thoughtful look.  "Al, it  _is_ pretty fucking weird for you to be going anywhere with Chris.  Didn't know you two even talk anymore.  Sure there's nothing I need to know?" 

"I...I told you.  He just gave me a ride.  It was ten minutes."  

"Okay.  Good.  He's a sweet kid, but y'know.  You'll have plenty of time for high school boys when you're in high school."  

Alex swallows, and the whole truth goes back down her throat, settling heavily in the pit of her stomach where it usually lives.  


End file.
